New Orleans Picayune

New Orleans Picayune (1837–), founded by G.W. Kendall and F.A. Lumsden as an independent paper whose price per copy was a picayune, a Spanish coin current in the Southern states before the Civil War, worth 6¼¢. The newspaper was distinguished for its field reports of the Mexican War, on which the U.S. government relied in part for information. It has always been considered the leading New Orleans newspaper and its only break in publication was for two months during the Civil War, although during Reconstruction it was forced to issue its own currency in order to continue publication. In 1914 it was combined with the Times‐Democrat to become the New Orleans Times‐Picayune. In 1933 it acquired the New Orleans States, an evening journal, and merged it (1958) with another acquisition, the New Orleans Item, to create the States‐Item. A further merger (1980) of all these combinations created an “all day” paper, The Times‐Picayune and the States‐Item, but under the recent ownership of Newhouse Newspapers it has become an “all‐day” paper on weekdays and a morning paper on weekends.